Waltzing Matilda
by the ramblin rose
Summary: Caryl, ZA. Two-shot. The house didn't look like the kind of place where someone would find everything they were looking for, but it held everything that he needed. Rated for some language.
1. Chapter 1

**AN: Hi everyone! So this is one that I've had partially done since around Christmas. I wanted to get it out there before the whole reunion because, in essence, it's a reunion fic. It's not, however, meant to be a depiction of what will happen on the show or even what I think will happen on the show. It's just a possible way that my imagination thought that things could go. It's meant for entertainment value and nothing more. It will have two parts. I'm working on/cleaning up/wrapping up the second part to get it out to you as soon as possible.**

 **Waltzing Matilda, for those who don't know, means to travel on foot with all of one's belongings on their back in a sack.**

 **I own nothing from the Walking Dead.**

 **I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!**

11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

Daryl stood in the graveyard and stared at the small house that was just outside the Kingdom. It looked like the kind of structure that should be abandoned. The yard of it was overgrown. There weren't any signs of life beyond the smoke that rose out of the chimney. It didn't look like the place where one might find everything that they were looking for—everything that they'd been searching for.

But they assured him that she was there, and he had to believe them because he didn't feel he could go on any longer without her.

Daryl had been terrified more than enough times in his life. He'd been scared so often that he'd come to think of fear as a second skin. It was something he'd worn, in one way or another, since he could even remember being Daryl Dixon.

Yet nothing—not his old man, not animated corpses tearing apart the people that he cared about, not madmen with tanks or baseball bats wrapped in barbed wire with a thirst for blood – nothing had ever terrified Daryl as much as the very thought of losing one person. Nothing scared him like imagining his life without one person—a person that he never would have thought would ever have such control over him.

And he'd lost her so many times before that he'd begun to think that holding onto her was like holding onto water—it just wasn't possible. She'd always slip away.

He was terrified, now, because if he lost her this time? His gut told him that it would be the last time. She didn't need him. She didn't need anyone. She was as suited as any of them to survive this world. Maybe, even, she was more suited than most of them. If she turned him away, there wouldn't be a next time. She would be deciding, today, not if she needed him, because it was clear that she didn't. She would be deciding if she _wanted_ him. And the possibility of her rejection, and all the finality that it carried with it, had Daryl so terrified that his mouth was dry and his knees felt like they wouldn't hold out to carry him all the way from the graveyard to the wooden porch of the decrepit house.

If she turned him out, she might as well dig a grave for him right where he stood—right next to some probably well-meaning soul who had taken his leave of this world before he'd seen it gone to shit.

But Daryl had to speak to her. One way or another, he had to know her answer.

1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

Daryl stood in the living room of the small house and looked around him. He'd have said it was a nice house if he hadn't seen the outside of it. Maybe it wasn't Buckingham Palace, but it was suitable to live in. If it weren't for everything that was going on around them, he could see himself happy to stay holed up in a house just like this one forever—if that's what Carol wanted.

"Did you have something to say?" Carol asked.

Daryl felt himself come out of the short daydream of spending a life in the little house with Carol. The Carol in his daydream certainly looked a great deal happier to see him than the one that was standing with her arms crossed across her chest. She might have wanted him to believe that she was angry, but she greatly misjudged his ability to read people. At the very least, she misjudged his ability to read her.

She was protecting herself. It was clear. She wanted to protect herself.

The only thing Daryl didn't know was why, exactly, she wanted to protect herself from _him_. But he did know that he should proceed with caution. She was already on high alert and that meant that how she might react to his presence was liable to be somewhat unpredictable.

"I got a lot to say," Daryl said. "Even if I don't know exactly where it's best to start."

"You better start somewhere," Carol said. "I've told everyone that I want to be left alone and it seems like nobody's quite able to comprehend that."

Daryl hummed at her and nodded his head. He'd spoken to King Ezekiel. He'd spoken to Morgan. He had been warned about Carol's current state of mind and her feelings regarding guests that encroached on the private space that she was building for herself out of the little abandoned house.

"I didn't come here to bother you," Daryl said. "But you know you can't stay here alone."

"No, because nobody will leave me alone," Carol said. "Every time I turn around there's someone else at the door with another reason why they need to talk to me. Another reason why they can't respect my privacy."

"And if you stay here? Alone like you think you wanna be?" Daryl said. "Then there's gonna be someone showin' up here that wants to do something horrible to you. Kill you. Beat you to death. Or worse, even, turn you into some kinda slave that suffers for his fuckin' amusement. You can't stay here alone. There's a war going on out there. In a few days? Negan finds out that everyone's ready to fight. In a few days? The shit's gonna hit the fan like it ain't hit before. Everyone's going to war, Carol."

"Not me," Carol said. "It's not my war."

Daryl shook his head at her.

"It don't matter," he said. "Whether you want to be in it or not, it don't matter. Negan takes everything for his own. He thinks everyone and everything belongs to him. It's just a matter of time before he notices this house and he figures that you belong to him to. You can't outrun him and you can't fight him. Not alone. There's too damn many people that he's got scared into helping him. You don't know how he is. You ain't seen what he's capable of. Not like I have."

Carol dropped her head and her arms loosened a little where she was hugging herself with them, but she didn't drop her protected stance entirely.

"I don't want to hear about Negan," Carol said. She shook her head. "I don't want to hear anything else about him. I've heard enough. I've heard...I _can't_ hear anything else about him."

"You need to know he's out there," Daryl said.

"I can't solve this!" Carol barked at Daryl, frustration bubbling up out of her. "I can't fix this! Nobody can, Daryl! It's never going to change. There's always going to be Negan. There will always be another Negan. Another Governor. Another Terminus. Another pack of Wolves. Another Negan. There's always going to be another Negan."

Daryl's chest caught. He knew that what Carol was saying was true. There was always going to be someone else who wanted what they had. There was always going to be someone else whose intentions weren't good. There was always going to be another obstacle that had to be overcome.

They could dream of peace, but they weren't very likely to find it.

"You might be right," Daryl said. "There might be another Negan someday. But right now? Negan? He's not a possibility. He's real, Carol. And it's just a matter of time before he finds you here."

Carol shook her head at Daryl.

"I'm not fighting him," Carol said. "I'm not going to war. I can't beat Negan. And I can't—I can't keep beating all the Negans of the world for everybody around me. I need to be alone. I can't hear anything else about Negan. I can't hear anything else about _anyone_. I can't. I don't expect you to understand that. I'm not asking you to understand it. I'm just telling you that I can't. And—if that's what you've come here to tell me? Then you've told me all you need to say and you can go now."

Carol moved one arm away from her chest to gesture toward the door. She tried, with one sweep of her hand, to dismiss Daryl and send him away from her. She seemed to think that's all it would take. One sweep of her hand he'd go, like a dog shooed out of the yard, to leave her alone forever—to meet whatever fate it was that she might meet while she sat in the house alone and waited for what would, more than likely, be a violent end to her life.

"No," Daryl said. He balled his fists up at his side. Feeling his fingers flexing reminded him that he was there. He was physically there. He was in her presence. It was real and it was happening and he was there. And he was as much in control of himself as anyone else was.

"What?" Carol asked.

"No," Daryl repeated. "No. You don't get to do that. You don't get to tell me that I gotta leave."

"It's my house!" Carol responded.

"No," Daryl said. "It's your hiding spot. You're playin' house, Carol. And you can use it to hide from Negan. You can use it to hide from everybody else if that's what you're after. But you can't use it to hide from me. You can't hide from me. I know you, Carol. And you know I know you. You can't hide from me."

Carol looked surprised by his declaration. She looked pained by it, too, and Daryl knew that it was because she knew that he spoke the truth. He shook his head at her.

"I didn't come here to tell you about Negan," Daryl said. "That ain't why I come. I come here to find you. And you sure as shit made it as hard as you could—but I found you. And I ain't leavin' 'til you hear me out. You owe me that."

"I don't know what makes you think I owe you anything else, Daryl," Carol said. "I've already given everything I have to give to the group. I don't owe anybody anything else."

"Maybe you don't owe them," Daryl said. "But you owe me. You at least owe me enough to hear me out."

"Why, Daryl?" Carol asked. "What do I owe you for?"

Daryl swallowed.

"Because I ain't never give up on you," Daryl said. "Not once. Not when anybody else might've. Not about anything. And that might not buy me a lot, but I think it buys me your ear for a few minutes."

Carol swallowed and stared hard at Daryl. He wasn't sure, for a fraction of a second, if she was going to hear his plea or if she was going to do her best to physically remove him from the house. At the end of it all, though, she sighed and nodded her head. He knew, too, that she actually intended to listen to him—to really listen to him—because she dropped her arms from the protected stance she'd been holding them in around her body.

"Go ahead," Carol said, her voice catching slightly.

Daryl's heart picked up so quickly that he swallowed against the sensation and wondered if it was what a heart attack might feel like. He'd prepared to come into the house and see her. He'd prepared to fight with her for the right to say what he wanted to say—what he needed to say—but he'd forgotten to prepare exactly what it was that he would actually say if he got the chance. Maybe part of him had never imagined that Carol would let him get this far.

But this time, Daryl wasn't going to let his fear paralyze him. He wasn't going to let it take away his voice. Because after this? There wouldn't be a next time.

"I didn't come to tell you about Negan," Daryl said. "I came to find you. I came to tell you that—while I was there? Locked in a damn closet and wondering if I was ever gonna get outta there alive..."

"I can't!" Carol yelled at him, surprising him. "I can't!" She repeated, lowering her voice. She shook her head at him. "I can't hear it, Daryl. I can't."

Daryl nodded his head. He held a hand up to her to try to calm her with the gesture. He thought he was starting to understand a little better where she was right now. He certainly understood how she'd gotten there. He changed his strategy. He picked his story up elsewhere. The details were too much for her and the details weren't important right now. The details, if she ever wanted or needed to hear them, would keep for however long she needed them to keep.

"While I was away from you?" Daryl offered. He waited a second to see if she'd stop him again, but she didn't. He swallowed and prepared himself to continue. "I realized that—we all live for something. If we keep on living? If we ain't give up by now? There's somethin' we're living for. Even if we don't even know what it is. But while I was—away from you? I realized—Carol? You're what the hell I been living for. Because when you just ain't there? I feel like I'm not living. I feel like—I'm just suspended somewhere between being alive and dead. No more one than the other—the same kinda thing as the Walkers except my heart's still beating. And when you ain't there? The only thing I'm thinking about is if I'm going to see you again. And when I'm going to see you again. Because imagining that I won't? That there's no seeing you again?" He shook his head at her and swallowed. "It makes me feel like I don't want to keep on living. Like it ain't worth it."

Carol looked like she wasn't sure if she was going to cry or be angry with him. More than likely, she was trying to be angry with him to keep from crying.

"I guess what I'm trying to say is—I love you," Daryl said. The words were difficult to say. They sounded strange to Daryl's ears and they tasted strange in his mouth. They sounded foreign, but at the same time, they sounded like the most honest words that he'd ever said. His stomach twisted at the thought that he'd actually put them out there, into the universe, and that Carol would respond to him, but his chest felt lighter too. A weight was lifted off because he no longer had to carry the burden of his feelings alone. Whether she accepted him or rejected him, the words were out there. And he repeated them again, finding that they were easier to say the second time. "I love you."

"Now you come to me and tell me that?" Carol asked. "All that time—all that time I loved you and you come to me— _now_?"

"You loved me?" Daryl asked.

Carol put her hand over her mouth. Her eyes went wide like she was surprised. Her surprise overtook even the tears that she was clearly fighting.

"You said it," Daryl said. "But did you mean it? You loved me?"

Carol dropped her hand.

"Of course I did," Carol said. "But—you couldn't love me. You didn't."

"Just took a little time getting around to saying it," Daryl said. "But—it don't mean it weren't there." He swallowed, running her words back through his mind in the somewhat frenzied state that his brain was currently running in. "You said you loved me. That mean you don't now?"

"It doesn't just go away," Carol said. "Not just because—you never felt it too."

Daryl felt his gut twist. He felt a tinge of frustration as he wondered if his words were even getting through to her. Still, he'd come this far to find her and he'd argued with Morgan and Ezekiel both when they hadn't wanted to tell him where she was. He'd been willing to do whatever he had to get here—to get this moment—and he wasn't going to squander it now.

Daryl stepped forward, closing the space that separated him from Carol. She looked at him, tears from her eyes dropping silently to her cheeks, and her chest heaved slightly with her struggle for breath. Daryl slipped his finger under her chin and lifted it. He swallowed and brought his lips softly against hers. She moved forward, a half a step, and kissed him back with equal softness.

When he pulled away from her, she was crying a little harder than she had been before.

"I'm not OK," Carol said, gently shaking her head at him. "I'm not OK, Daryl. It's not OK. It's never going to be OK."

Daryl's chest tightened and he hissed out a quiet noise to shush her—hoping it might soothe a little of the pain that she was evidently feeling so strongly at the moment.

"I know it ain't," Daryl said. "I know it ain't OK. But—it's gonna be. Starting right now? It's gonna be better."

"I can't," Carol said, though she didn't tell him what she couldn't do. Daryl shook his head back at her.

"You don't gotta do nothing," Daryl said. "Nothing you don't wanna do."

Carol seemed to find some strength in those simple words. Almost immediately the flow of tears seemed to lessen. Daryl watched as she sucked in a breath and stilled her features. She nodded.

"OK," Carol said, her voice coming out as barely more than air.

Daryl nodded his head at her, mirroring her movements. He didn't move his hand, though, from under her chin. Instead, he brushed his thumb against the soft skin of her face and she leaned her head gently to press into his thumb.

"I love you," Daryl said. "I did. Even when I didn't say it. And I still do. That's all I come here for. I come to tell you that."

"I love you too," Carol said. She sucked in a breath quickly. "I did. And I do."

Daryl bit back his smile enough to not let it overtake his face that way that it felt like it wanted to. He nodded his head gently at her again. She was calming and he didn't want to do anything that might disrupt that calm. He swallowed.

"I'm going to kiss you again," Daryl said. "OK?" He asked.

The corners of her mouth just barely turned up. Despite her tears, he saw a bit of the smile travel to her eyes. Even with his hand still holding her face in place, Carol nodded at him. He felt it even more than he saw it.

"OK," Carol said, sniffing back against her tears.

Daryl lowered his lips to hers again for the same soft kiss as before. This time, Carol opened her lips to him and he dared to deepen the kiss. She let him kiss her for a second before she moved to play back with him, her tongue sweeping across his and sending a shiver through his body.

He didn't plan on dropping his hand, but he ended up bringing it to Carol's back and, before he knew it, he had both hands on her body—searching her out while they kissed. He'd never touched her before. Not like he was now. And she felt so good in his arms that he didn't want to stop touching her. When her hands began their own journey around his body, Daryl felt like he'd found the place he wanted to stay forever.

The house wasn't much—but Carol was his home.

When the kiss broke, Carol sucked in her bottom lip and stared at him. The tears were mostly gone. The anger from before was gone. But there was something there in her eyes, now, that Daryl hadn't ever seen before. He felt it, though, even if he'd never seen it.

"I'm going to take you to the bedroom," Daryl said, glancing away from her only quickly enough to look in the direction of the room that he'd seen when he first came inside—the room where he could see the foot of her bed announcing that was where she slept.

He looked back at Carol and she nodded her head.

"OK," Carol said.

Daryl usually considered himself a man of few words. And that one was the only one that he needed. He'd come to the house to find Carol. He'd found her. And now he would have her, just like he wanted to have her—heart, body, and soul. He'd have her as completely as he wanted, and she would have him too. He wasn't letting her go again. He couldn't.

11111111111111111111111111111111111111111

 **AN: Yes, this is a fade to black moment. Feel free to let your imaginations run wild. The second chapter, hopefully, is to come soon.**


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: Here we go, the second and final chapter of this little short. Once again, I repeat that this isn't my prediction for the show in any way. It's simply a little thought that I had. It's only for some brief entertainment.**

 **My apologies to the person who was, apparently, upset by not having smut. I hope you find something that satisfies you elsewhere.**

 **I own nothing from the Walking Dead.**

 **I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!**

111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

Daryl had seen Carol, day in and day out, for what seemed like most of his life—at least for most of the only part of his life when he'd truly felt like he'd been living. He knew what she looked like when she slept. He knew what she looked like when she first woke and how her eyes grew dimmer as the day wore on and fatigue settled in for her. Daryl knew what she looked like when she cried and how her happiness over something, no matter how simple, could light up every inch of her face.

But he felt like he'd never seen her before when he saw her smile at him, over her shoulder, as she was getting out of the bed that they'd slept in together the night before. Before she could stand, Daryl reached his hand out and brushed his fingertips across the small of her back.

"Stay," Daryl said, his own voice still graveled from sleep.

"I wish I could," Carol said. She sucked in a breath and let it out in a sigh. "You have no idea how much I wish I could. But—you said it yourself. I can't stay here."

Daryl sat up in the bed with a start.

"What?" Daryl asked.

Carol stood up from her spot on the edge of the bed and started to dress.

"I can't stay here," Carol said. "There's going to be a war and I can't be a part of that war. It isn't my fight to fight any longer. Something will happen and someone will come—someone will die. It doesn't matter how it happens. If I stay here? I'll get swept up in it. It'll draw me back in and then it'll consume me. And I can't—I can't fight this war." She looked at Daryl and frowned. "I wish you wouldn't look at me like that."

"I got no other damn way to look at'cha, Carol!" Daryl responded. He sat up, then, entirely in the bed. Hearing her say that she couldn't stay, and that she was leaving, felt like it was ripping Daryl's heart in two. It felt like she was saying that he was losing her again and, worse than that, that she was leaving him. He hadn't imagined that they'd spend the rest of their lives together—not in this tiny house when he knew well that there truly was going to be a war raging just outside—but he hadn't thought that she would leave either. He'd been suspended, for just a few hours, in the happiness that they'd created. He'd forgotten to keep his usual tight hold on the reality of the world around them. "Last night was the best damn night of my life! It was like somethin' straight out of a damn dream and now you're just telling me that you're leaving? How the hell you think I'ma look at you?!"

Carol shook her head at him.

"I can't stay here," Carol said. "I can't. You said it yourself. And I can't go back, Daryl. I can't go back to the group. I can't join the Kingdom. I can't be anywhere where there's—where there's _people_."

"And you can't do this shit alone, neither," Daryl said. "Nobody can. It was one of the last things I ever heard Andrea say and she weren't wrong. We weren't made to be alone, Carol. You and me? We were made to be together."

Carol nodded her head. She sucked her lips back, against her teeth, almost to the point that the disappeared.

"Yeah," she said. The word came out with a burst of air and Daryl could hear the slight choking sound that came from fighting back tears. "We were. But I can't do it anymore, Daryl. I have to be alone. Because if I'm with people? I'm going to care. I can pretend I don't, but I can't make it actually stop. And if I care? I'm always going to feel like I have to fight for them. I'm going to feel like I have to save them if I can. And the worst part of it is that I don't even believe that they'd try to save me if the shoe were on the other foot. Rick? He would never do the same for me that I would do for him. He never did."

"That may be true," Daryl said. "But this ain't about Rick. It's about you an' me, Carol." He felt like he couldn't breathe. He felt like his lungs were working—he could feel their efforts as they brought air in and let it out, but they weren't making good use of that air.

"I don't want to kill," Carol said. "Not anymore. I don't want to be the reason that people die, Daryl. And—like Morgan? I don't want to be the reason that they kill either." She shook her head at him. "I know—I know that you probably don't feel the same. And I understand. I understand if you need to stay, Daryl. I understand if you need to fight with them because you feel like this war is your war. But—I just can't stay. It's not my war. I left them, and I'm leaving again. And this time? I'm not letting any of them follow me." Now fully dressed, Carol started out of the bedroom, but she stopped in the doorway. She reached a hand out and caught the doorframe like she needed it to steady herself. She stood there with her back to Daryl for a moment before she turned and looked at him again. She offered him a tight smile, but she couldn't hide the tears that had escaped her eyes to rest on her cheeks. "I love you, Daryl. I did and I do. And—I always will. I'm so glad that you came. Thank you. Thank you for coming and—and for loving me. I understand, though, that you're not ready to leave them. And that's OK. It's OK."

Carol nodded her head at Daryl and left the room, disappearing into the rest of the house, and Daryl sat for a few moments in the bed and tried to process everything she'd said. Pushing his feelings aside as much as he could, and searching out whatever rationality that he could find within himself at the moment, he tried to put himself into Carol's shoes.

And then he made up his mind. Carol had to do what was best for herself. She hadn't done that. She hadn't ever been allowed to do that. Probably, for the first time in her life, Carol was standing up for herself in such a way as to say that she knew what she needed and she was determined to have it. Carol needed that.

But Daryl had to do what was best for himself as well.

Daryl got out of the bed and dressed as quickly as he could in the clothes he'd discarded the night before. He wandered into the living room and from there made his way into the kitchen. Carol was standing at the stove, warming a pot of water, with her back to him. He could hear her sniffing, though, and he knew that she was struggling with her own emotions over everything she'd just said to him.

Maybe she wouldn't take what he had to say to her so badly.

"You wanna go?" Daryl asked.

"I have to go," Carol said.

"You wanna just leave, then, that it?" Daryl asked.

"I have to," Carol said. "I told you. I have to go."

Daryl nodded his head to himself because Carol kept her back to him. He'd seen her in every way he thought was possible—but still she felt the need to hide from him right now. He knew, and he understood, that she felt the need to hide from him because she didn't want him to see how badly her own words had hurt her.

"Fine," Daryl said. "You wanna go? We'll go. We'll leave."

"What are you talking about, Daryl?" Carol asked.

"I'm talkin' about the same thing you are," Daryl said. "Pack up. Everything we can carry with us. We'll leave today. Disappear. Go where the hell nobody'll know where we went. Nobody'll follow us."

"You can't do that," Carol said.

"I can do it just as good as you can," Daryl said.

"They're your people, Daryl," Carol said. "Your family. You couldn't just leave them."

Daryl nodded at her again, even though she couldn't see him.

"Sometimes family leaves, Carol," Daryl said. "I ain't gonna stand here and pretend that I don't care about 'em. You know I do. I know you do too, or leaving wouldn't hurt you so bad. But—if I gotta choose? Between them and you? I can't live without you, Carol. I know that now. Don't wanna live without you. So if leavin' them's what you gotta do? It's what we gotta do."

Carol shook her head at him, her back still to him.

"I can't do that," Carol said. "I can't let you go with me."

Daryl laughed to himself.

"And you can't stop me, neither," he said.

Carol turned around. She swiped at her face with the back of her hand, trying to blot away the tears there with her skin.

"Don't you see?" Carol said. "I can't do that. We can't do that. Because eventually? Daryl—there's gonna be another Negan. And I can't see anyone hurt you. I can't _stand_ that. So eventually? It'll be the same as it has been. Kill or die. Or make someone die or kill." Carol shook her head at Daryl. "Our _love_ will make us die or it'll make us kill. That's why we can't be together."

Daryl swallowed. He didn't believe her. He didn't believe, for even a moment, that Carol didn't want him going with her. If she truly didn't want him to be with her, she wouldn't be struggling so much with the words that she was trying to use to tell him that he had to stay behind.

"You can tell me you don't want me to go with you," Daryl said. "But you can't stop me from followin' you. You wanna go on by yourself? You go. But I'ma be right there. Just a few steps behind. I lost you before. I ain't losin' you again."

"I love you," Carol said. "I do. I love you—so much. When you left the prison? When you found Merle? I didn't want to live without you, Daryl. When Rick banished me from the prison? I thought—I'd never see you again. So many times I thought you were gone from my life..."

"As many times as you were gone from mine," Daryl said, interrupting her.

"I don't want to live without you," Carol said. "But I don't want to kill either. I can't keep doing it. I can't keep living like that. And if I'm with you? I'm going to have to kill again because I'm never going to—Daryl, I'm never going to be able to see someone hurt you and not kill them."

Daryl nodded his head at her.

"And I'ma kill anybody that tries to hurt you," Daryl said. "Carol—there's gonna be killin' and there's gonna be dying. That's the world we live in now. And there ain't no way to stop it. Here or there, we can't hide forever."

Carol shook her head at him.

"Maybe I need to hide forever. I just want quiet," Carol said. "I want peace. I just want—as much of that as I can have before it's the end. I don't want to go to war anymore. I don't want to fight. I'm tired of fighting."

Daryl felt a catch in his stomach. It was the first time that Carol had admitted she was tired in those words. She was tired of fighting. She was tired of the life that she was living—the life that this world and their experiences had forced them into.

It was the kind of tired that Daryl could understand, too, because he'd been that tired before.

It was the kind of tired that could end a life if someone didn't have the strength to keep going and the support they needed to remind them what they were fighting for.

But maybe, also, it was the kind of tired that required a change in what exactly it _was_ that they were fighting for.

"You and me?" Daryl said. "We don't go to war. Not this war. They don't need us. And even if they do? It's time they learned to fight their own wars. We paid our dues. We've done all we can do. You and me? We're leaving here. I can't promise you that we don't ever kill again. I can't. If I could I would—but that just ain't the world we live in no more. You and me together, nobody's gonna kill us, but I can't promise that we don't gotta kill to stop 'em from trying. But what I can promise you is that we're gonna fight to live the kinda life you wanna live. The kind of life _I_ wanna live. With you. You like living in this house? We'll find our own. Better than this one. Where nobody knows where are. Nobody knows who we are. I can hunt. We'll plant a garden. Grow vegetables. Fruit. Whatever the hell you want. Live so damn quiet that the whole world'll leave us alone because they don't even know we're there. I can't promise we don't fight and we don't kill no more. But I can promise we'll do whatever we have to so we can live right up until we die because we got no business living anymore."

Carol shook her head at Daryl.

"You don't want to leave them," Carol said.

Daryl crossed the kitchen, closing the space between them.

"I can't stay with 'em," he responded. "Not if you don't."

"You don't want to live trapped in a house somewhere," Carol said.

Daryl laughed to himself.

"I wouldn't feel trapped with you," Daryl said. "If the damn thing hadn't exploded? We could've learned to live at the CDC. If the Governor hadn't come? We could've learned to live at the prison. I think we could learn to live in a quiet little house, Carol."

"You need your freedom," Carol said.

Daryl took a step closer. She didn't move away from him. She stood right where she was, waiting for him to reach her. He reached a hand out and she didn't shy away from it. He caught her and pulled her to him. She didn't pull away. She came willingly into his arms and wrapped her arms around him when he wrapped his around her.

"I need you," Daryl said. He sighed. Feeling her wrapped around him, once more, cemented the thought for him more than anything else might. If he'd had any doubts, he lost them all at once. He'd felt empty since she'd gotten out of the bed. Now, just standing with her arms wrapped around him again, his chest felt full enough to burst. "I only need you."

Carol sighed and rubbed her face against him like she was seeking more closeness from him than she had—but there wasn't any physical way for them to get closer. In response to her sought out affection, Daryl simply squeezed his arms tighter around her and she sighed.

"We have to go," Carol said. "There's a war coming, and it's not ours to fight."

Daryl laughed to himself.

"No," he said. "We got our own to fight. Let's pack. We oughta leave soon."

111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

Their pace was never the stuff of legends, but they covered ground pretty well. They slept nights in "stops" they cleared together. The worst of nights they spent in questionable holds like sheds. The best of them they spent in houses that they rejected, for one reason or another, as their stopping point. They made their path through the mountains to be long and weaving and impossible for anyone to follow and, for the most part, they made their way without seeing anyone. They avoided highways and main roads. Often they avoided roads entirely and stuck, instead, to travelling through the woods and waiting on the surprise of what might be just ahead.

Sometimes they killed, but it was only when every other option was exhausted and they couldn't avoid it at all. But Carol wasn't carrying the burden of the kills for them both. Instead, they did everything together.

And while they walked, given plenty of time to say what they needed to say and enough air and space around them to hold everything that they couldn't hold inside any longer, they confessed.

Carol confessed to Daryl about the heavy burden she was carrying. She confessed about Karen and David. She confessed about Lizzie and Mika. She confessed about guilt she had over deaths that had nothing to do with her—people who had died helping her and people she'd killed because they would have killed others if given half the chance.

And when she'd confessed, and Daryl had absolved her of her sins as much as any power granted him the right to do, he encouraged her to leave the burdens along the path they made. They were too busy carrying what they needed. They didn't need to carry things that did neither of them any good.

Daryl confessed as well. He confessed his feelings of failure. His feelings of failing her. He confessed that he felt as though he should've been the one to follow Sophia instead of Rick. He confessed that he felt responsible for her daughter's disappearance—even if it was no more his fault than T-Dog's death was Carol's—and he confessed that he'd felt he could never make up for the failure of not having found the girl. Daryl confessed those same feelings, too, when it came to the time that he spent with Beth. He told Carol that he'd felt like saving her would give him a chance to right the wrong he felt like he had in his past with Sophia—but, in the end, he'd failed Beth as well. He felt like he'd failed everyone.

And Carol convinced him to leave his own burdens behind him as well—the only traces they left of their passing through the mountains—because they were too heavy to carry when water and food were more important.

Slowly, they covered miles and they peeled off layers of past sins and past failures. They peeled off layers of past hurt and past betrayals. By the time the snow first started to fall around them, they were both more susceptible to the cold because they'd peeled off nearly everything that they'd been using to protect themselves throughout the years. They'd laid themselves bare to each other and they'd forgiven each other and accepted what was shown to them in every way possible.

Shivering and moving slower than they normally would one morning, Daryl knew it was time for them to stop. It was time for them to make a claim—at least until the spring. They'd covered enough ground together and it was time for them to rest. And he knew, the moment he saw the little house set alone in the middle of an overgrown area that had once been cleared to make a home, that they had found the place to rest.

"Carol?" Daryl called back to Carol who was ten or twelve steps behind him. She was walking with her head down, trying to guard her face from the icy wind, watching her feet as she stepped carefully over the snow that was accumulating on the ground.

"What is it?" Carol asked, closing the gap between them.

Daryl smiled at him.

"I found it," Daryl said. "Looks pretty good. Don't see any damage from here and—I think I see some firewood stacked up under that little lean to that'll get us through the first night. And we haven't even seen a Walker in miles. Nobody's gonna find us up here."

Carol looked at the little house and then she looked at Daryl and smiled.

"You mean for the night or...?" Carol asked.

"Was thinking a little more along the lines of forever," Daryl said. He shrugged his shoulders. "Or at least for the winter. It's your call."

Carol smiled and nodded her head.

"It's perfect," Carol said. "It's just—perfect."

Daryl didn't need more than that. Rather than let her walk a few steps behind him now, Daryl dropped a hand across her back and pushed her forward so that they could walk together toward the little house.

In a world where so much was so far from perfection, Daryl figured that everything was just about as perfect as it could possibly be.

11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

 **AN: The end. Thanks for reading.**


End file.
